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Fingerless gloves She saw thes of striped Berber wool, reinforced with leather at the palht them and pulled them on They covered her hamsas entirely, and she couldn’t deceive herself that she’d bought them for warmth She knehat she wanted She wanted what her hands wanted: to touch Akiva, and not just with her fingertips, and not with caution, and not with fear of causing him pain She wanted to hold hi She wanted to fit herself to hiainst him, discover him, hold his face as he had held hers, with tenderness

With love

"It will come, and you will know it," Brih he had surely never dreamed it would co She did know it It was sier or happiness, and when she looked up fro and saw Akiva in the square, standing soh her like her nerves were channeling starlight He was safe

He was here She rose fro there at a distance

And when he came to her, it ith a heavy tread and a closed expression, slowly, reluctantly Her certainty vanished She did not reach for hiht shrank back up her nerve endings, leaving her cold, and she stared at him--the heavy slowness, the flatness of his look--and wondered if she had i between them

"Hi," she said in a sht be ht still nited in her It hat she had alanted and thought that she’d found: someone as for her, as she was for hi to hers and answered theht nod and made no move to coin to convey her gladness

"You waited," he said

"I… I said I would"

"As long as you could"

Was he bitter that she hadn’t promised? Karou wanted to tell hi as she could" was a long ti for him all her life But she was silenced by his closed expression

He thrust out his hand and said, "Here," and there was her wishbone, dangling by its cord

She took it,a whispered thank you as she slipped it over her head It settled back into its place at the base of her throat

"I brought these, too," Akiva said, and placed on the table the case that held her crescent-moon knives "You’ll need them"

It sounded hard, al back tears

"Do you still want to knoho you are?" Akiva asked He wasn’t even looking at her He was looking past her, at nothing

"Of course I do," she said, though it wasn’t what she had been thinking What she wanted right noas to go back in tiue She had believed then, with a certainty that was both thrill and refuge, that Akiva was coht of the soul for her Noas like he was dead again, and though she had her wishbone back, and though she was going to learn, finally, the answer to the question at the core of her being, she felt dead, too

"What happened?" she asked "With the others?"

He ignored the question "Is there soestured to the crowds in the square, the vendors building their pyra ca "You’ll want to be alone for this," he said

"What… what do you have to tellto tell you anything" Akiva had been gazing past her, unfocused, this whole tiun to feel like some kind of blur, but he fixed his eyes on her now Their brilliance was like the sun in topaz, and she saw, before he looked away again, the bare glint of a yearning so deep it hurt to behold Her heart leapt

"We’re going to break the wishbone," he said

And then she would know everything, and she would hate hi to prepare himself for the way she would look at him once she understood He had watched her from the square for a handful of seconds before she looked up, and he witnessed the way her face was transforht of hiht It was as if she had emitted a pulse of radiation that reached him even where he stood, and it bathed him and it burned him

All that he didn’t deserve and could never have was in that instant All he wanted noas to fold her against him, lose his hands in her hair--which was clean and coht as rivers over her shoulders--lose hirance and softness of her

He real had told hi shaped of clay in the for the symbol aleph into its brow Aleph was the first letter of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebreord truth; it was the beginning Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hair, in a woven dress the color of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and… love… on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning His soul

His wing joints ached with the desire to beat, once, and propel him to her, but instead he walked, heavy and heartsick His ar for her The way the light went out of her at the cold manner of his approach, the hesitation and hope in her voice--it was killing hiave in and let himself have what he wanted, she would only hate him more once she knehat he really was So he held hi for the mo at the wishbone in surprise "Brimstone never did--"

"It wasn’t his," said Akiva "It was never his He was just keeping it For you"

He hadn’t been able to drop it in the sea That he had even considered it made him sick with himself--more evidence of his unworthiness of her She deserved to know everything, in all its heartbreak and brutality, and if he was right about the wishbone, she very soon would

She seenitude of the moment "Akiva," she whispered "What is it?"

And when she looked at hi, he had to turn away again, so powerful was the longing that twisted through hi her in that s he had ever done

And it one on between them in that terrible, false way, but Karou had seen what she had seen, and felt it, too--Akiva’s yearning,her own in a deep place--and when he turned away she experienced a sudden unspooling, like the snap of a cable and all her restraints giving way, and she couldn’t bear it anyloved hand, haainst his skin, and turned hiaze up at him, and took his other arer fearful, but low and ardent and sweet "What is it?" Her hands climbed him, over the steel of his arms and shoulders, up rah-sertips were on his lips, so soft by comparison She felt them tremble "Akiva," she repeated "Akiva Akiva" She see

And so, with a shudder, he did He dropped the pretense, and dropped his head, so his brow caainst the sun-warmed top of hers His arms went around her and drew her in, and Karou and Akiva were like two ht With a sigh, she softened, and it was pure hoainst him and rest She felt the coarseness of his unshaven throat at her cheek as he tested, against his own, the perfect water-s time, and they were quiet but their blood and nerves and butterflies were not--they were ra in a wild and perfect melody, matched note for note